Samson & Delilah

Civilization ended on a cloudless summer morning. Millions of people were killed. Millions more would never be the same.

Samson and Delilah could only watch in terror and pray as massive earthquakes and fiery volcanoes destroyed…everything. It was a miracle they survived.

Now, lost and alone, they must find a way to survive, and overcome a lifetime’s harsh training to become mates. Humanity’s future depends on them…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Excerpt ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Dee?” Her name escaped him as a hoarse whisper. “Are you all right?”

Her long midnight hair was tangled, and tears were leaving tracks down her dirt-smeared pale face. She stared at him with wide blank eyes, and for one brief moment he thought she was dead. Then she blinked once, twice, and her full breasts rose and fell in a convulsive sob.

“We were wicked!” she moaned, curling into a fetal ball and rocking from side to side. “This is our punishment! I repent, I repent! Oh, please, I repent!”

Samson crawled over to her, barely even feeling the additional aftershocks that sent more loose rock cascading down the steep hillside. “Dee, stop! We’re okay…we’re alive! Stop it!” He had to slap her face to cut through her keening hysteria. “We’re alive! It’s not our punishment!”

“It is!” Helplessly she clutched his broad shoulders, then buried her face against his bare chest. “I was wicked! I didn’t believe! I never should have left the commune!”

If she hadn’t, he reflected, staring numbly across the vast burning expanse that had once been lush and green, she’d be dead. And if he hadn’t followed her, he would be, too.

“The commune is gone,” he whispered. “But we were spared. We escaped before the Enemies attacked.”

“Gone?” She gaped up at him in stunned horror. “How could it be gone? How could…”

Then she followed his bleak gaze, and gasped. “The whole world has been destroyed!”

It surely seemed that way. The steep hill they’d crossed that morning had a curiously flattened look to it; gaping scars crisscrossed the valley where the earth had opened, or bluffs had cascaded down. Enormous trees were scattered like twigs. Beyond the rise, smoke from dozens of blazing fires rose in thick, choking columns. The wide river they’d swam across, balancing heavy bundles of food and blankets on their heads, was choppy with white crests as tremors continue to vibrate across the land.

“The fires shouldn’t reach us,” he murmured, and wrapped comforting arms around her slender shoulders. “They’ll burn out when they reach the river. But this isn’t a safe place for us.” Another rock clattered by even as he spoke, and he watched it skitter down the hillside and disappear. “We need to keep going.”

She looked around in confusion. “Where?”

He didn’t know. How far had the earthquakes spread? If they could make it safely to the peak of this mountain, would they find the same destruction on the other side?

Grimly he pulled her upright, then swayed when his legs insisted on turning to rubber. Dee’s lush body felt oddly disturbing against his, and yet somehow so right! Something stirred deep inside him, and he sucked in an uneasy breath. “We need to go,” he repeated, and forced himself to take a cautious step back.

The woman tempted me, he thought, and feverishly clutched himself with both hands. If this breathless torture wasn’t penance, he didn’t know what was!